1. Industrial Field
This invention relates to a printer and a page turning apparatus for passbooks or the like suitable for passbook printers built in terminal apparatuses or passbook issuing machines handled by tellers of banks or other financial agencies.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the banks and other financial agencies, there are installed cash dispenser, cash depositors, Automated Teller Machines (ATM) and other banking terminals that the customer uses. These machines have a passbook printer built in for entering the amounts of transactions in the passbooks.
Likewise, in banks and other financial agencies, there are passbook issuing machines used by tellers.
Generally, passbooks have double-spread pages, and if there is no column to enter the sum of transaction on a given page of the passbook, it is necessary to turn over the page to the next page. For turning over pages, there are two methods: the user previously opens a desired page and inserts the passbook into the machine; or an automatic page-turning device in the passbook printer or in the passbook issuing machine performs a page-turning operation.
As an example of prior art automatic page-turning machines of this kind for printers of passbooks or the like, there is a well-known apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,036. This apparatus has a passbook pressing member which, when turning over a page causes the pressing member to be pressed against the passbook, thereby bringing the page-turning roller into contact with the cover or an intermediate page. A frictional force is produced between the page-turning roller and the cover or the intermediate page of the passbook, and the page-turning roller is rotated clockwise to displace the uppermost sheet in the direction of the binding line of the passbook to be curved upwards to be turned over. For this page-turning operation, a sheet to be turned over is assumed to be flat, and the pressing member is controlled so that the frictional force to be produced is greater than the resistance of the uppermost sheet but is of a magnitude not to cause the other sheets under the uppermost sheet to be turned over. Each time a page is turned over, the passbook is moved into and out of the set position for paging.
The problem with the prior art apparatus is that the pressing member has to be installed to press the page-turning roller against the page of the passbook on which data is entered. Specifically, the pressing member needs to apply an optimal force between the page-turning roller and the sheet surface to such an extent as not to cause a paging error. Adjustment for setting this optimal pressing force is difficult (in other words, variation is likely to occur because of manufacturing tolerance). To meet the above requirement, the composition of the apparatus has to be complex. In addition the positioning of the pressing member in a limited space of the terminal apparatus requires greater time and labor in the manufacturing process. Thus, the production cost is higher, and an increased number of parts causes a greater difficulty in assuring the reliability of the apparatus.
In a passbook or the like, which has a complicated initial shape, a sheet of this passbook will exhibit resistance of several times to more ten times greater than the resistance of a sheet of a passbook which is flat. In this case, the sheets sometimes cannot be turned over.